Virtuoso Life - March/April 2009 - (Page 106) WANDERLUST GLOBAL GOURMET Wish chocolate was a main-course affair? Head to Oaxaca, now. Holy Mole HEn It COMES W Bold flavors: Mole rojo and (right) bags of spice at Oaxaca’s market. 106 VIRTUOSO LIFE to color, culture, art, and food, Oaxaca is about as stimulating as it gets for the eyes and taste buds. A trip to Mexico’s second-most-southerly state is a grown-up venture – more of an anthropological dig than touristy wild abandon. Of course, there are great surfing beaches; Puerto Escondido, for one, is worth a visit, as are Oaxaca’s craggy mountain villages, its agave groves, and the rain forest on the great wild isthmus that lies between the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico. But the state’s sophisticated and brazenly colored city of the same name, with its two dozen churches, zocalo, markets, and prolific examples of colonial architecture butting up against bright stucco buildings covered in bougainvillea, is where I always start. There’s no time to unpack: The second I arrive I’m on the street, even on my third visit to this city, about 320 miles south of Mexico City. Oaxaca is vivid with charm, overflowing with intense flavors, and brimming with things to do, buy, and eat. Art is everywhere. I drop by Victor Artes Regionales, one of the city’s oldest shops, which is housed in a seventeenthcentury monastery and filled with antique woven tablecloths, dance masks, and huipiles – hand-embroidered blouses. I (MOLE) SPIKE MAFFORD, (SPICES) ERIC FutRAn/StOCKFOOD CREAtIvE/GEttY IMAGES BY PeggY KnicKerBocKer
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